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With the lamp of learning as her guide, it’s not surprising Cindy Elverson followed the path of academia as she advanced in her nursing career. 

The Missouri native began practicing nursing in 1979 after graduating from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Through seven years as a staff nurse, 10 years as a neonatal nurse practitioner and 28 years as an educator, some of that overlapping, a desire to grow her knowledge has guided her career path. 

On April 21, that path closed as she retired from 28 years of service to South Dakota State University, initially in Brookings and then Sioux Falls. 

Since May 2021, Elverson has served as assistant academic dean for the Sioux Falls campus, where there are two undergraduate options, both enrolling 48 students per year and about 20 faculty and staff members teaching in the 20-month fast track and 12-month accelerated programs as well as the online graduate programs. 

In nearly three decades at State, Elverson has worked under three deans — Roberta Olson, Nancy Fahrenwald and Mary Anne Krogh — and taught thousands of students. 

One of them is Rebecca Jost Baird, a 2013 graduate who is supervisor of clinical research at Sanford Health in Sioux Falls. She credits Elverson for introducing her to research and “provided an exceptional experiential opportunity that inspired my personal career journey. I am so grateful to her for that experience and for the supportive leadership she has provided.” 

Maintained hospital role until 2003 

Elverson started her career as a staff nurse on the surgical floor at the University of Missouri Medical Center in Kansas City in 1979. That same year she started working in postpartum nursing at the Research Medical Center in Kansas City. In 1981, she became a staff nurse in the special care nursery there. 

Elverson remained in neonatal nursing for much of her career and gained a master’s degree in perinatal nursing from the University of California San Francisco in 1986. 

From the West Coast, Elverson landed a job in the neonatal intensive care unit at Sioux Valley Hospital (now Sanford). It was there she gained her first taste of teaching, doing classroom and clinical instruction three months a year in the ������Ƶ neonatal nurse practitioner certificate program. 

Elverson had completed the program herself in 1988. 

“I always wanted to gain new knowledge. Initially I satisfied that by getting a master’s degree and working in the hospital at that level,” she said. She stopped teaching in the certificate program in 1994 but taught on an adjunct basis at ������Ƶ while holding down a full-time position at Sioux Valley Hospital. 

Her official start date at ������Ƶ was 1996, but she kept a position at Sioux Valley Hospital until 2003. In 2004, she was promoted from instructor to assistant professor. 

Learning about Nightingale 

“Academia sounded good to me because there was always something new to learn,” Elverson said. Her final formal learning was a doctorate from the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha in 2006. But there has been plenty of informal learning opportunities, including three trips to Ghana, two trips to England and a Native American cultural immersion. 

In May 2010 she was joined by three other faculty members and two graduate students for an observance of the 100th anniversary of the death of Florence Nightingale, who laid the foundation for professional nursing. 

The group was led by Marge Hegge, a distinguished professor emeritus and a Nightingale Scholar. In addition to visiting the Nightingale Museum in London, the group participated with several thousand nurses from around the world in a commemorative evening service in the historic Westminster Cathedral. 

Featured speaker was Nobel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu from South Africa, whom Elverson said was “a very funny guy.” 

Learning other cultures 

Elverson’s first trip to Ghana was in 2016, when she and colleague Ruth Klawiter joined a group from the University of South Dakota’s health sciences administration program. They toured Sanford World Clinic facilities throughout the country. Elverson and Klawiter returned in May 2017 and 2019 with ������Ƶ student study-abroad groups. 

The now-retired Klawiter “was my soul sister on that experience. We complimented each other so well,” Elverson recalled. 

Another standout experience was August 2022, when the college’s Native American Nursing Center coordinated a cultural immersion for faculty members. “I got to see and do things and learn things from people who are from the native culture in a way I never would have had an opportunity to do so otherwise,” including visiting Wounded Knee. 

Pursued research late in career 

Elverson gained graduate faculty status in 2008 and took on research projects, several related to nursing scholarship and mentoring. 

However, her favorite research project was one completed in September 2023 that carried a $2.1 million, five-year federal award. 

Elverson partnered with Staci Born, a registered play therapist and then an assistant professor in counseling, and Christin Carotta, associate professor in human development and family studies. The educators’ “South Dakota Early Childhood Mental Health Collaborative” partnered with Inter-Lakes Community Action Partnership Head Start and Southeastern Behavioral HealthCare. 

“We increased the numbered of registered play therapists and increased screening and identification of children who would benefit from play therapy at Head Start and Southeastern,” Elverson said. 

Seeing former students in practice 

Through teaching 28 years, many of Elverson’s students have become practitioners in the area. 

“I remember once when my mother-in-law was in the hospital, and I was in her room visiting her. I could hear a nurse talking as she approached my mother-in-law’s room. I was very happy (her former student) was going to be my mother-in-law’s nurse. I had a lot of confidence she would be a good nurse for my mother-in-law,” Elverson said. 

Retirement plans for the 66-year-old Elverson include spending more time with family and friends and to-be-determined community service. 

Her administrative duties will be split between Robin Arends, advanced practice registered nursing director in Sioux Falls, and Karin Emery, assistant dean on the Brookings campus.